The Archaeology of Inundated Late Pleistocene Landscapes in the Northeastern Gulf of Mexico

In the fall of 1807, U.S. President Thomas Jefferson dispatched William Clark to the fossil quarry at Big Bone Lick in Kentucky to collect, if possible, a complete mastodon skeleton. This unusual mission proved to be eminently successful and resulted in the retrieval of numerous well-preserved paleontological specimens, which are curated today in New York, Philadelphia, Monticello, and Paris, France. Clark 's excavation also led to the recovery of five fluted points, three of which have been housed at the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History since 1817. The Big Bone Lick fluted points (carefully chipped stones) are among the very earliest Paleoindian materials found in the Americas.